Dates

1977 – ????

Members

Recordings

VINYL SINGLE 1978: New Wave Love/Hungry Men No Longer Steal Sheep But Are There Hanging Judges?  (Ultimate Records: ULT 402) …… recorded in an empty house on Eastfield Road !

VINYL COMPILATION ALBUM 1979: “Business Unusual” featuring “New Wave Love” (Cherry Red Records: ARED 2)

CD COMPILATION ALBUM 1996: “Punk Rock Rarities Vol 2” featuring “New wave Love” (Anagram Records: CDPUNK 83)

UNRELEASED RECORDINGS: Although never released, the band recorded “Destroy It”, “Northern Ireland”, “Sexpertease”, “Switch On Switch Off” and “Who Cares”

Biography

Formed in 1977 while their drummer was still at school and with an average age of 17, the Dole became Peterborough’s second serious punk band after the Now. They secured local support shows to visiting bands including the Radiators and 999 and quickly found a sympathetic home at local imprint Ultimate Records, who’d released the first Now recordings. ‘New Wave Love’, which concerned a local girl who followed the band around, was surprisingly deftly executed, and earned a place on Cherry Red’s popular Business Unusual compilation in 1979. However, by year’s end the band had broken up. Howsam joined Dancing Mirage, Page joined the Point and Neeve formed mod revival band the Name with former Now drummer Joe Macoll before leaving after a few weeks.

He was responsible for alerting to me to the fact that in 1978, Emu was featured in a News of the World scoop about a punk and a vicar’s daughter after it was revealed he was getting up close and personal to the offspring of a local cleric. Ah, those were the days. This was actually also the source of the song ‘New Wave Love’, as Neeve explained to me. “The title of the News of the World piece was ‘Punk Rock Boss Plays Hell With Vicars Daughter!’ It concerned the fact that Jo Edwards, our manager at the time, was pissed with Belinda Cawood, who was seeing Heron (Pete Howsam), but whom I’d also shagged. She told Pete about our quickie and after I made it clear that that’s all it was, she gave him an ultimatum – her or the band! Pete chose her. A sad loss as he was our best songwriter. He wrote ‘New Wave Love’ about her and on its release was featured in one rag giving her a six-foot Valentine’s card. Jo Edwards was the one who got us involved with Ultimate, although we all knew the engineers.” It’s also worth noting that a gang of Dole fans subsequently formed the Destructors, whose Gizz Butt went on to play guitar for the Prodigy on their live appearances.

Nowadays Neeve is a train driver and ASLEF steward. So is there anything in the vaults out there? “There is a CD kicking about of a recorded set by the Dole, I haven’t heard it myself, but would like to. Apparently Paul Vjestika has it. It was recorded at Spaceward, Cambridge, just before we split up.”

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